When Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 prompted several Southern states to secede, the North was sharply divided over how to respond. From small towns to major cities, from state capitals to Washington, D.C., Massachusetts historian Russell McClintock highlights both powerful and obscure individuals to demonstrate the ways in which ordinary citizens, party activists, state officials, and national leaders interacted to influence the Northern response to what was essentially a political crisis. He argues that the decision fell into the hands of an ever-smaller group of people until finally it was Lincoln alone who would make the decision for war.

"With deft strokes, McClintock describes the various competing concepts of union among Republicans, Democrats and others and discovers that in the end they agreed that representative democracy must oppose disunion or else self-government itself would be lost.... More than any other scholar, McClintock incisively shows that in the end the North and Lincoln simply could not let the South go."—Library Journal